There's an old saying that goes, "When your only tool is a hammer, everything you see looks like a nail."

In college basketball, if all you can do is hate Duke, every foul you see looks like the worst call in history.

The buzz from this year's Final Four was not so much admiration for a gutty, talented and resourceful Duke team that won the title, but rather a pathetic whine about how the Devils "get all the calls." The hysterics ran wide and deep, conjuring up the refs, the NCAA and CBS as grand co-conspirators to put Duke over the top.

I guess that same "let's make Duke win" conspiracy fell apart at the last minute in the 1999 title game which Duke lost to UConn. Or perhaps the one in 1994 against Arkansas. Ditto for Final Four failures in 1990, 1989, 1988 and 1986.

"Thank God the 'Big Plan' held together this year," Blue Devil fans must be saying to themselves. "It's about time the people we've been bribing to bring us another title finally got their act together!"

Sportswriters run in packs and spend many hours drinking free beers in hospitality suites, eating free food and stealing half baked ideas from each other to use in their own columns. Press rooms are hardly laboratories for great independent thinking.

So it was no surprise then that a raggedly officiated semi-final game between Duke and Maryland started getting worked up like a Jesse James heist among the "pen and mic club" membership. Once somebody wrote that "Duke gets all the calls," a herd of others were quick to follow.

Just listen to this nonsense from Tom Knott in the Washington Times:

"Shane Battier apparently is protected by an imaginary shield during the game. You are not allowed to penetrate his imaginary shield. If you happen to nudge Battier in the slightest way, you are whistled for a foul. That is how the game goes if you are the Blue Devils and you are trailing the Terps by 22 points in the first half. Curious stuff starts happening in your behalf. Battier falls down. Foul on Tahj Holden. Jason Williams loses the ball. Foul on Terence Morris. The Blue Devils are out of position on defense. Traveling violation on Steve Blake. The Terps are cleaning the defensive glass late in the first half. Foul. Foul again. They get the benefit of the doubt because of their impeccable reputation. They are the Duke Blue Devils. They are very special. They are Billy Packer's team."

Well, I hate to be the one to break it to Mr. Knott, but Duke is definitely not "Billy Packer's team." Packer went to Wake Forest, and besides, he is so wrapped up in rooting for himself, there's little time for anybody else. I won't even bother to add in the episode a few years ago, when Packer got stopped at Cameron Indoor by a couple of female students working the media entrance. Apparently "Pope Packer" forgot his media pass and was denied entrance. Stunned that he was neither recognized nor worshipped as the brilliant basketball analyst he thinks he is, Packer proceeded to blister the students with a sexist rant that made national news.

Oh the Dukies, Packer loves em!

In fact, Packer is the lead conductor of the "Duke gets all the calls" media orchestra. I would call his in-game rants shameful, but I know that shame is beyond his grasp. When Maryland got called for their second foul of the game Saturday (yes, second foul of the game!) Packer started banging the drum by telling Jim Nantz, "You know Jimmy, Duke is getting a lot of calls early here tonight."

Say what? Two calls in almost 4 minutes is "a lot of calls." Oh yeah, Duke had been whistled twice as well, making it a 2-2 game on the foul board.

Packer then trotted out his favorite statistical nugget, one that he recycles to the point of nausea. That nugget: "Duke makes more free throws than their opponents even attempt!" Wow! Call The New York Times! No kidding?

What Packer fails to mention every time, is that such a statistical imbalance exists among many top teams in the country. This should not be too hard to follow, even for a Wake grad like Packer: good teams, with good players, are harder to guard, and thus get fouled more often. When he trotted out his beloved stat again on Monday night against Arizona, he forgot to mention the following disclaimer: "Duke makes more free throws than their opponents attempt, but so does Arizona!"

Without wasting too much time digging, I found the following teams who enjoy the same margins at the charity stripe.

But again, why bother with cold hard facts, the people will believe what they want to believe. Which is why columnists like Knott look so silly to anybody who bothers to analyze a basketball game beyond the level of a frustrated sixth grader.

Yes, the Duke-Maryland game featured some horrific calls and no-calls. I counted roughly eight of them. Of those eight, I figured it went about 5-3 against the Terps. The crowning injustice was Lonny Baxter's fifth foul. Anybody would admit it was an abomination. But had the call gone against Boozer for his fifth it would have been just as outrageous. The two big men were merely taking their spots in the post. With that little time left in such a game, a ref has to let the guys settle it on the court if at all possible.

That being said, Duke was still ahead by 5 at the time. Had the "fix" been in, one would think the refs would merely let Duke take over from there, and not risk "exposing" their scheme with an intentionally heinous call.

Rather, what was on display at that moment, was incompetence, not corruption. Curiously, the NCAA left veteran whistles like John Clougherty, Ted Valentine, Jim Burr and Ed Hightower home for the Final Four. They are recognized as some of the best in the business. Go ahead, ask any coach in D-I. If you got one of them on the court, chances are there will be at least be some consistency and order to the contest. If not, you never know.

Even still, the crew of Dave Libbey, Mark Reisheling and Ted Hillery split the fouls fairly evenly at 26-23 in favor of Duke. And don't start with the "timing theory" of these calls helping Duke. Fact: when Maryland led 66-62, Duke was whistled 5-1 over the next three minutes. Still, they closed the gap to just a point at 69-68.

And yes, Tom Knott's untouchable "Golden Boy" Shane Battier got called for an offensive foul in that stretch. So did Mike Dunleavy a few minutes later. If Duke was paying these refs at this point in the game, I would certainly ask for my money back. So much for getting "all the calls."

In the title game against Arizona, Duke got away with two rough blocks that could have been called fouls. You would think this has never happened before to any other team in college basketball! Jason Williams was spared a foul on an inadvertent collision with Jason Gardener that did not cause Gardener to lose possession. Hysteria among the Duke bashers! Williams picked up two fouls in the first 4 minutes and had to make a quick trip to the bench. But remember, Duke "gets all the calls." He even got a charging call later in the game. Not enough, demanded the Duke bashers, he must foul out!! Just before the end of the first half, Duke was hit with a 3 second lane violation. It was the only one of the entire Final Four.

Still, at the end of the night, the fouls were just 20-17 in favor of Duke. If that's a conspiracy, I have to say I'm underwhelmed.

I do feel for Maryland fans. Losing a 22 point lead in a national semi-final is the stuff of sleep-stopping cold-sweats for the next 9 months. But let's also be honest. With that kind of bulge, you should be able to close the deal with the refs from the 1972 gold medal game in Munich. When the Terps lost at home this year by flushing a 10 point lead in the final :52 seconds, it was once again those damn refs!

I might remind people that Duke had to live down the memory of ash-canning an 18 point lead to Kentucky in the 1998 Regional Final. I don't recall any Duke fans bleating that "Kentucky gets all the calls." That's because it makes you look silly at best, and pathetic at least.

I guess the "Duke gets all the calls" crowd missed the first Duke-UNC game of this year at Cameron. Duke had rallied to tie the game, only to see Brendan Haywood draw a loose ball foul on (get this, are you reading Mr. Knott?) Shane Battier with less than 2 seconds to play. Haywood hit both free throws, and Duke was left to wonder "I thought we got all the calls? What happened?"

Mercifully, not everybody was dancing at the Duke Basher's Ball over the weekend. Read what Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote in Sunday's post-mortem:

"And yeah, Maryland will rail about the refs and the series of calls that let Duke back into the game. But that's what Maryland does: It blows leads and then acts as if it's somebody else's fault. A few years ago, Williams railed at an official during a game against Georgia Tech: "We're a good team and we get no respect!" Maybe there's a reason. Maybe a truly good team doesn't give back 22-point leads."

You would think this Duke team had earned unanimous accolades as a most worthy NCAA Champion. All they did was lose three players to the NBA Lottery just two years ago, go just seven players deep this season, and lose their starting center for the last six games of the year (and first two of the tournament).

It's time to stop playing "conspiracy couch zebra" people. You're starting to embarrass yourselves.